BEHIND THE WEEKEND BOXOFFICE – 5/12/13

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Mothers Day made for a happy holiday at the multiplex.

OPENINGS:  The Marketing department did its job extremely well, and THE GREAT GATSBY (Warners) overperformed to the tune of $51.1M for the weekend.  However, the 9% Saturday drop suggests the film may not hold up so well in the long-term.  The first sign will be whether tomorrow’s final numbers have Sunday slipping lower than the currently estimated 20% drop.

The studio priority for STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS (Paramount) was to improve its overseas performance compared to the 2009 franchise reboot, which made a relatively puny $128M outside the US.  The sequel is off to a good start, with $31.7M in just 7 territories, reportedly running as much as triple its predecessor’s pace.  The Enterprise docks in the US on Thursday (aka Wednesday night).

PEEPLES (Lionsgate) had little impact with a $4.9M opening.  However, it did have an impressive 45% Saturday bump, suggesting that the opening might have been stronger if the movie hadn’t been counterprogrammed against Gatsby on Friday.  Lionsgate is being very aggressive with its Sunday estimate, claiming a further 13% increase is in store.

MUD (Lionsgate) pushed itself to a semi-wide release of 854 theatres with a $2.3M weekend and a $2800 per-theatre average.  With $8.4M earned to date, it’s unclear whether the film will have the stamina to reach the $20M level of earlier spring indie The Place Beyond the Pines.

HOLDOVERS:  IRON MAN 3 (Disney) dropped 58% in its second weekend to $72.5M (again, helped in part by Mothers Day).  That’s steeper than the 50% drop for The Avengers in its second weekend, but just about even with the 59% decline for Iron Man 2.  (Both of those second weekends also included Mothers Day.)  Iron 3 is running about $74M ahead of Iron 2 ($285M to $211M), suggesting that Iron 3 could end up with about $425M in the US.  Of course, that’s on top of its gigantic foreign results, currently at $664M (worldwide total so far:  $949M).  There’s no longer any doubt that Iron 3 will make over $1B worldwide, and it seems likely to become the 5th biggest movie in history, ahead of Transformers 3 ($1.123B), but not quite at the last Harry Potter ($1.342B).

All other holdovers faded far behind, although thanks to Mothers Day their holds were quite strong for the most part, with just a 14% drop for THE CROODS (DreamWorks Animation/20th) in its 8th weekend, and even a mere 33% decline for PAIN & GAIN (Paramount). The downside is that this week’s high Sunday grosses are likely to make next weekend look particularly ugly by comparison.

LIMITED RELEASE:  Only Sarah Polley’s STORIES WE TELL (Roadside) dared to open opposite Gatsby, with a fair $15.5K average in 2 theatres.  THE ICEMAN (Millenium) expanded to 17 theatres with an unexciting $6400 average, KON-TIKI (Weinstein) had a dull $3800 average after expanding to 22 theatres, and AT ANY PRICE (Sony Pictures Classics) had only an $1100 average with a spread to 50 theatres.